This invention is related to print controllers, and more specifically, to a print controller having a capability for scanning and directly printing the scanned document image.
Conventionally, print controllers (also known as network printers) do not have the capability of directly printing scanned input documents. A scanned image must be ported to external software (via e-mail or a TWAIN driver) before the image can be printed from the controller. Document image formats in conventional implementations are also more restrictive, to scanned image formats such as TIFF, JPG, BMP, PNG, PDF, etc.
Users find the conventional architecture inconvenient, since use of the external software is more time consuming for printing the scanned image. Utilizing a direct print methodology for printing an image directly from the controller repository would be much faster. Furthermore, there would be no network traffic between the print controller and the external software.
What is needed is a print module that facilitates direct image printing on the print controller from a wide variety of image formats.